From the global reach of livestream theatre to two
experiences that were altogether more intimate:
WORDS:
The Hope Theatre in Islington is a tiny space above the Hope
and Anchor pub. In the evening it puts
on short runs of new and experimental plays. But Thursday afternoons are
reserved for ‘rehearsed readings’ of plays by new writers – tryouts for new
works that may go on to be produced elsewhere, fully acted out but with the actors
still working from scripts.
I was there to see a two-act play called Voltemand and Cornelius are Joyfully Returned.
Like Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead, the title refers to two minor characters from
Hamlet, and like Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, the play revolves around two hapless characters lost in a
world that appears to baffle them.
Actor Paul Vates, the author of the play, has recreated some
of the rapid fire dialogue, the verbal misunderstandings, the stupidity masking
as madness (or madness masking as stupidity), of Stoppard’s original. But this
time, the world in which the characters are lost is not Hamlet’s, but the
German trenches in the midst of the First World War. And the question around which the play
revolves is whether Voltemand and Cornelius are really mad or whether they are faking
it to escape the lunacy of the trenches.
As for Yossarian in Catch 22, proof
of insanity is tantalisingly elusive. As one character says: “Every so often I
have a burst of lucidity and [the doctor] tears the papers up again.”
It was a clever move for Vates to set this in the German
trenches rather than the British. It helps
to shake the audience out of the ‘seen it all’ before mindset. This is not Blackadder or Oh What a Lovely War, but new territory.
The three young actors playing the lead roles were highly
impressive. They managed to convey a
depth of emotion even while juggling with the yellow pages of the scripts. In
fact, I quickly forgot the scripts were there at all (even when one of them was
thrust temporarily into my lap and then as abruptly snatched away). If
anything, the emotion was intensified by being in such a small space, with the
audience literally on top of the action.
I’d love to see the play given a wider audience. With the
various commemorations of the First World War that will take place over the
next four years, the time is ripe for it to be picked up and given a full
production.
& MUSIC
One week later, I was in Ray’s Jazz Cafe at Foyles Bookshop
in London to hear the music of Newanderthal.
The name derives, as frontman Ansuman Biswas explains, from
the fact that Neanderthals discovered language and fire, while our ancestors – homo sapiens, ‘the clever ones’ – invented
weapons. ‘I like to think the Neanderthals
sat round the campfire, sharing songs. Hence we are the Newanderthals.’
They describe their music as as ‘a potent blend of esraj-accompanied
Ethiopian and Bengali song forms, with mbira patterns derived from Steve Reich
and jazz-infused bass riffs.’
The esraj is an Indian stringed instrument a bit like a
mandolin which is held upright on the knees and played with a bow. The extraordinary-looking
array mbira, played by Tom Green, is a modern adaptation of the African thumb
piano. In place of a long row of piano
keys, it has parallel rows of metal tines that when pressed and released
produce a sound like a harp, but more precussive. Then there is something that
looks like a kettle barbecue but which, in the hands of Biswas, makes a sound
between a marimba and a steel band, while Mal Darwen provides rhythm with an
acoustic guitar and an electric double bass.
And through this blend of sounds, like a gold thread through
a piece of shot silk, weaves the voice of Ethiopian singer, Haymanot Tesfa. Her
range is extraordinary – at times deep and powerful, underpinning the rest of
the music, and at times dancing across the top of it.
Cafe gigs are notoriously difficult. Often you have to
compete, not just with the espresso machines, but with an audience that,
instead of falling quiet, talks louder in order to hear themselves over the
music. Not this time. Tesfa’s voice wraps itself around table after table,
drawing them into her spell. People close their eyes, the better to listen and
pick out the different strands of the music.
I thought perhaps the group was creating arrangements of
traditional Ethiopian folk songs. But as
Tom Green explains afterwards, the process is somewhat more organic than that. Using patterns from Indian and Ethiopian music, the three instrumentalists
improvise a sound that blends their different instruments, while Tesfa finds
words and melody to harmonise.
The result is unlike anything you are likely to have heard
before. You can get a flavour of it from this extract on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/haymanot. But if you get the chance to hear them
perform live, then grab the opportunity. You won’t regret it!
